Over 100,000 Americans await organ transplants and over 6,000 die annually while waiting. From an economic perspective the decades-long organ shortage has a simple cause: paying organ donors is illegal.

2021 proved to be another challenging year due to COVID-19, although life did more resemble normal. Bad events can blind us to the ways life is getting better, and several innovations are improving life. Let’s start with messenger RNA (mRNA), employed in the Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccines. mRNA is one of the building blocks […]

People perform many tasks – yard work, laundry, house cleaning, cooking - that they could pay someone to do.

Inflation is currently America’s most pressing economic concern, but I believe that our disappearing workers pose a greater long-term challenge.

As the college football regular season winds down, the coaching carousel heats up. So far in 2021, 28 of 130 FBS programs have had coaching changes. Coaching decisions illustrate some elements of economic and business decisions generally. Perhaps unexpectedly, imagination plays an outsized role. I will focus on coaching vacancies from firing, not retirements or […]

The nomination of Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has drawn criticism for views offered in the professor’s research. Should expounding extreme ideas disqualify someone from government service?

Americans have long seen college as a path to a better life and held higher education in high esteem. This is changing rapidly, with a strong political divide emerging. Republicans are now highly skeptical of both the above propositions. This month witnessed a potential watershed moment for higher ed with the announcement of a new […]

America is experiencing extended shortages of goods without recent precedent. The global transportation system is heavily congested, with dozens of ocean freighters waiting off California to dock. Is America’s economy beginning to emulate the former Soviet Union? Consumer spending quickly recovered from a sharp decline at the COVID-19 pandemic. More significantly, the pandemic and the […]

Modern Monetary Theory offers some unconventional policy recommendations based on the United States’ monetary sovereignty. MMT proponents also advocate government guaranteed jobs paying a living wage for all Americans. What would be the consequences of such a guarantee?

For centuries pharaohs, emperors, and kings ruled and made average folks do their bidding. The rise of political liberalism changed our conception of power, arguing that governments existed to serve the people. A new book argues we must bring liberal principles to our money. Government actions ultimately involve force, which liberalism argues is legitimate only […]

A lack of workers is slowing a return to economic normalcy. Everyone likely knows businesses either still closed or open reduced hours due to the worker shortage.

The Biden administration is proposing tougher tax enforcement to help pay for the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package. Collecting legally owed taxes is a laudable goal, but politicians have historically discounted the compliance costs of taxes. History may be repeating itself. The most controversial enforcement proposal involves banks and other financial institutions reporting all accounts […]

In 2019, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal, with a price tag estimated at trillions to possibly tens of trillions of dollars. When asked whether Washington could afford the Green New Deal, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) showed that we could. In recent years MMT has received considerable attention. The theory […]

The 2021 Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) rankings from Canada’s Fraser Institute show freedom essentially unchanged in the United States. But some important changes in the rankings will be coming soon. Economic freedom is based on “the concept of self-ownership.” We should have “a right to choose – to decide how to use [our] […]

Local governments establish laws and codes to help structure our social interactions and penalize the rule breakers. The use of fines as a type of taxation should offend us all.

The United States has long been seen as the Land of Opportunity. While unfortunately some Americans were excluded from these opportunities, ambitious and hard-working people from across the world came here for freedom and helped build our prosperous economy.

Can we learn economics from a pencil? We can, as one of the great contributions of economic education illustrates. America would be better off if our experts understood the pencil’s lesson.

The reluctance of many to take the free, highly effective COVID vaccines has led to calls for mandatory vaccination. Economics can offer perspective on vaccine hesitancy.

Inflation exceeded 5% in June. Double-digit inflation burdened Americans in the 1970s. Although we treat inflation as bad, economists find its costs hard to pin down. The three economic functions of money help us think about inflation’s costs. Money’s first role is a medium of exchange, meaning a good way to conduct transactions. With barter, […]

The 1992 Energy Policy Act authorized imposition of energy and water efficiency standards on household and commercial products. Consumers have not been thrilled with the new products. As Jeffrey Tucker puts it, “Anything in your home that involves water has been made pathetic, thanks to government controls.” President Trump repealed regulations on showers, but the […]

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change set a new goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The costs and consequences of aggressive action against global warming basically exceed comprehension. Recent research in sustainability buttresses this point. Estimates put the level of energy use “compatible with avoiding 1.5ºC of global warming without […]

A highlight of my Fourth of July is the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. This year Joey Chestnut devoured 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes, breaking his world record. This competition illustrates how commercialization allows people to earn a living fishing, playing cornhole, or even eating. The hot dog competition is the premier event […]

State and local governments lure businesses with incentive packages. Yet these governments impose rules stifling entrepreneurs starting new businesses, forgetting that Amazon, offered multi-billion dollar deals for its HQ2, started out of Jeff Bezos’s garage. A new Cato Institute study, “Entrepreneurs and Regulations” by Chris Edwards, details the state and local government burdens on startups. […]

The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Alston portends change for college sports. This case involves education-related benefits and is separate from cases about athletes’ “name, image and likeness.” The NCAA’s 100-year effort to not pay student-athletes is close to ending. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the opinion, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion […]